Ohio State’s COVID-19 case dashboard. Ohio State announced Friday evening that all student organizations were suspended through Sept. 9 and 82 students have tested positive in a 24 hour period, bringing the total student cases to 366 between Aug. 14 and 26. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State
All in-person Ohio State student organization events have been suspended until Sept. 9 and 82 students have tested positive within a 24 hour period, the university announced Friday.
In an email to student organization leaders Friday evening, Dean of the College of Public Health Amy Fairchild and Director of Student Health Services Gladys Gibbs said in-person events are not permitted, regardless of size of the gathering or location.
“The battle here is with COVID-19, and unfortunately that will require taking more significant steps for the next couple of weeks in hopes for a continued and successful semester,” the email reads.
According to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard — which launched Tuesday — 366 of 19,910 students tested between Aug. 14 and 26 tested positive for COVID-19. The 82 additional students tested positive within 24 hours of Aug. 26 and the positivity rate was 3.74 percent.
The dashboard was originally supposed to be updated weekly, but Johnson announced in a press release Friday plans to update it daily and to include additional information.
Along with displaying the number of cumulative student cases, the dashboard now includes the weekly and daily student positivity rates.
“We have one shot at this, and we have to get it right. Each of us has a responsibility to do their part by wearing our face masks, practicing good hygiene, limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer and maintaining physical distancing — whether indoors, outdoors, on campus or off,” Johnson said.
The university will begin testing 8,000 randomly selected students living off campus at Jesse Owens North Recreation Center Monday. Selected students were notified Friday.
